Needed: A paper trail for county ballots

A year and a half-long study of the security vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems has just been published by the Brennan Center For Justice at New York University, deploying the expertise of a panel of computer security experts, including Dr. Dan Wallach of Rice University. This seminal study recommends a regime of tests and a voter-verifiable paper trail ( VVPAT). It is referring tofor the huge Hart InterCivic, Inc., electronic voting system right hereused in Harris County.

A coalition of local vote protection advocates, including the Harris County Democratic Party and People For the American Way's Election Protection Division, have been advocating these protections for our vote since the fall of 2004. Our efforts have been dismissed by the Harris County clerk with the rebuttal that "voting is a faith-based exercise." To date, they we also have been ignored by Houston Mayor Bill White, who has statutory responsibility to assure the efficacy of the voting system used in city elections. At least County Clerk Beverly Kaufman has met with our group, though neglecting to implement solutions. The mayor has not even been willing to meet. with our Committee. He has also failed to send a representative from the city to observe the failed tests on the electronic voting systems used in city elections.

So, what is the big deal?

Shouldn't we trust our election officials to "do the right thing"? The answer is yes, but only if proper measures are in place to enable them, and provided we the voters are able to verify that our votes are cast and counted as intended.

Since a major tool — access to the operational programming of the Hart system — is denied to our local election officials, we the people need reasonable assurance of the efficacy of the Hart voting system.

As recommended by the Brennan Center study, those assurances ought to include:

•Automatic routine audit of paper records with the above-mentioned Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail — a printer with the voting machine.
•Testing for improper interventions, called parallel testing, during the election.
•Banning of the wireless components on all voting machines.
•Mandating of random selection procedures for testing.
•Implementation of effective procedures for addressing evidence of fraud or error.
•Better security than sending hundreds of Harris County polling place election judges off with sensitive machinery in the trunks of their cars the weekend prior to election. This primitive exercise makes the equipment susceptible to rudimentary software attacks.
Think about it: We expect our bank accounts, ATM cards, credit cards and other important transactions to be secure from computer irregularities and tampering. We should expect no less of our voting systems.

Yet, our Harris County election authorities have refused to institute security measures and to rectify the failed logic and accuracy tests attempted since the beginning of use of the Hart voting machines. They've also refused to stop using software programs explicitly forbidden by Hart.

This is not to infer that the county clerk has anything but the best intentions for the voting public. She has a record of reaching out on a nonpartisan basis. But security omissions in this case neither serve the best interests of her office nor those of voters.

When the Hart voting systems were acquired in 2001, voters in Harris County thought they were being treated to the "latest and greatest" in voting system technology. This electronic system replaced a punch card system (remember hanging chads?) with the belief that we needed to enter the electronic age in the electoral process while also meeting emerging federal guidelines to simplify the voting process for our disabled citizens.

Bipartisan and nonpartisan citizen groups were formed to provide feedback on the technology options available, a laudable effort to seek the participation of the community. The Hart InterCivic, Inc., system was chosen, tested in early voting in 2001 and rolled out to the county's hundreds of polling places for the 2002 election.

In the 2002 election some strange "vote flipping" incidents occurred that actually resulted in the temporary sequestering of machines reported as malfunctioning. The problem occurred with votes cast for senatorial candidates Ron Kirk and John Cornyn "flipping" to both rival party candidates. Lawyers were dispatched to scratch their heads over the cause and effect. No resolution of the situation was achieved.

This same anomaly occurred in the Kerry/Bush presidential election in 2004 in Harris County. Once again, the matter was dismissed as a "glitch" of no consequence and blamed on improper voter use.

Across the nation, it has been estimated, 30 percent of votes cast in 2004 employed electronic voting systems purchased from a half-dozen companies. Computer security experts began to express concerns about the vulnerability of these systems to malfunction due to "shoddy" software and hardware and too-rapid deployment. Concerns about tampering and "hacking" were also expressed with highly visible tests conducted in Texas, Florida, California and Maryland.

A Chicago-based computer consulting company was hired by the state of Ohio to evaluate major electronic voting systems products and security vulnerabilities. The Hart system showed considerable vulnerabilities.

Locally, the study was completely ignored. Security advocates were cast as hysterical Luddites. The strongest critics of the failure to assure our votes are cast as intended and counted using electronic systems are leading academic specialists and programmers whose expertise is in the functioning of these systems and security protocols, not political operatives and "crazies."

In all, 1,218 voting machine complaints were filed in Texas in the 2004 general election with People For The American Way's Election Protection Division. In Harris County, 2,400 voting machine complaints were filed with a national voting advocacy group during that election.

In addition to these complaints, others were filed in Collin, Travis, Bexar and Wichita counties. Complaints included vote "transfers" (Kerry/Bush evidenced the same phenomenon reported in the 2002 and 2004 election in Harris County), lost votes, and machine and memory card failures. For the 2004 election, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Verified Voting Foundation received more complaints from Harris County than from any other voting jurisdiction in the nation.

A major recount dispute in the 2004 state representative's race ultimately won by Hubert Vo revealed to all that the Hart InterCivic system does not permit a recount process; merely a "regurgitation" of the same data into infinity. The absence of recount capability was ignored by our election authorities.

Fast-forward now to last March's 2006 primary elections, where estimates are that more than 40 percent of votes cast in Texas were on electronic machines. Major disputes and lawsuits emerged regarding the Hart InterCivic System and machine-counting irregularities in Tom Green, Zapata, Webb, Tarrant, Jefferson, Winkler and Duval counties. The 100,000-vote malfunction of the Hart System in Tarrant County was documented in a whistleblower lawsuit involving a former employee of Hart. These failures in our electronic election systems were again ignored by authorities.

Locally, observers from the Harris County Democratic Party documented the failure of the Hart System to meet any reasonable standard for several logic and accuracy tests run for the 2005 city elections and the primary elections of 2006.

In the meantime, while local officials and the news media twiddle their thumbs:

• 27 states, not including Texas, have adopted requirements for a voter verifiable paper trail on electronic voting systems.
• Both major political parties have inserted such a requirement into their respective platforms.
• The Carter/Baker Commission on elections recommended a paper trail in 2005.
• The Texas and national League of Women Voters have passed a resolution with such a requirement for electronic voting machines.
• An election administrators professional association in Texas has gone on record supported a paper trail.
• A congressional GAO report has endorsed this remedy.
• An Election Center National Task Force For Election Reform committee, on which County Clerk Kaufman serves, published a recommendation supporting VVPAT.
• The Democratic National Committee recently endorsed VVPAT.
• Dozens of voting rights advocacy organizations have published support for VVPAT.
The problem is now well-identified. But our local election authorities have not given us the security measures necessary to assure us that our vote is cast as intended, can be counted accurately and recounted as necessary.

The solutions are at hand. Hart InterCivic Inc. has VVPAT systems (printers) available to add to our voting machines. These are already in use elsewhere in the United States. Travis County, a Hart System user, has developed an excellent model for a testing regime that can guide us. Local experts have offered their expertise.

It is time to stop expecting some "other" governmental authority, such as the federal government, to solve this problem. We have the political consensus to solve it now, except for the three holdouts — the Harris County clerk, the mayor of Houston and the Texas secretary of state.

Because we do not have voting-systems testing and VVPAT in place here, we simply do not know if our vote is being counted or tabulated properly. We do not know if fraud or abuse is taking place. We are entitled to security to assure accuracy for the most important electronic transaction we will ever make — our precious vote. The debate has long been over. Expert and national consensuscompelus to act.

What are we waiting for, Harris County?

Merriman is a member of the Voting Security Committee of the Harris County Democratic Party. He can be e-mailed at stan.merriman@sbcglobal.net.